Digital And Digital Immigrants By Marc Presky

Since children today have become digital natives; they will never truly know a world that is not touched with technology. This means that the educational paradigm has to shift in order to keep up with the needs of our young learners (Jo, 2016). In the last thirty years, technological advances

Americans are known to reflect on East Asian education systems, then compare those systems to the education system here in the United States. When doing so, people tend to come to the same general conclusion: there are intensifying problems within the American education system. Marc Prensky, the author of “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” argues that the real issue with educating today’s youth is that our education system’s design does not accommodate today’s students since they are not the same as the students who molded our education system years and years ago. Today’s students are referred to as “digital natives” and their educators are referred to as “digital immigrants.” Delivered through Prensky’s syntax/diction and his overall audacious

Cathy N. Davidson suggests an innovative education system, providing an emphasis in today’s digital era, and claiming that the existing education system needs to be renewed according to the new expectations of the digital era. Davidson states that,” In the last half century, many changes have occurred in the technology field, however, classrooms and educational methods have remained fairly steady for the past years as well in consequence students are not being prepared for the future advances of society.” That being said, it is important to improve and to give a change to the current educational methods, adjusting them to the existing demands of the era that we are living and taking advantage of the resources that it provides. “What if we continued to the lesson of internet itself,

We carry our cellphones with us at all times, and with all this online connection, you would think that stepping back and disconnecting is a huge achievement. But this is a new way of life. Nathan Jurgenson, in his article “The IRL Fetish” says, “We have come to understand more and more of our lives through the logic of digital connection. Social media is more than something we log onto; it’s something we carry within us. We can’t log off.”. He explains how we are so deeply connected with technology that it is nearly impossible to stay ‘old-fashioned’. We are learning to accept technological advancements because they are inevitable. In other words, to adapt to this new form of literacy is much easier than avoiding it. In recognition that texting truly is literacy, one English teacher had her students put excerpts of Richard III into “text speak” to show that they fully understand the material. Educators are embracing texting as a new form of learning because it clearly is not going away. Students enjoy texting as a way to escape reality and fail to recognize the literary benefits. Texting will continue to encourage students to read and write as well as improve spelling with phonological

Technology has many attributes and applications that improve livelihoods. As a student myself, one of the most obvious advancements is in the field of education. Educational technology has slowly been integrated into classrooms over the last decade. Today, the basis of technology, digital literacy, is a crucial skill for academics. “Students who are digitally literate know how to effectively use technology to collaborate, create original content, and conduct in-depth research for academic purposes” (Dotterer, “Fostering Digital Citizenship In The Classroom”). Some worry that the use of technology will encourage people to “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful” (qtd. In Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”).

For some of us, it is difficult to comprehend why our education systems have not yet made the transition to technology-based forms of teaching especially when we are in the era of technology. To others, the reasoning is clear and they support the original, dated usage of textbooks in a “traditional classroom” setting. The changes in our society are undeniable with the innovation of technology and social media. Although some authors, such as Neil Howe and Jean Twenge, argue that technology is deteriorating the minds of Millennials, technology is also providing Millennials with a way to create connections across communities.

In the text ‘The dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future’ written by English professor Mark Bauerline at Emory University, he continually emphasizes the implication that the millennial generation has intellectual deficiencies because of their dependency on social media and technology. One of his most relevant theories is that the use of video games and the integration of technology into the classroom has negative impacts on a student’s academic performance because “It conditions the minds against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unassisted by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else” (Bauerline 95).

We are currently living in a digital age where our students are notably technologically proficient. This poses a challenge with how some of our students are currently learning (or trying to learn) in our classrooms. Many students have grown tired of reading dense texts for homework assignments and tired of listening to long, boring lectures from teachers at school. The way in which students are currently analyzing and interpreting texts that they read and videos that they watch have not been up to our standards here at North Windsor High School. The thing is, a lot of our teachers are also struggling between teaching with both print text and by digital means. North Windsor High School acknowledges the fact that many seniors graduate not having the digital skills and print text literacy necessary to lead successful lives after high school. We are beginning to implement some changes with our teaching methods and hope to incorporate technology and print text in different and more engaging ways.

In 1998, I began working as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant. Pat was teaching Spanish and French enrichment classes to our elementary students’. Briefly, she taught Spanish to first through third graders and French to fourth and fifth graders. When the school day ended, and the school building was quiet, she would come by my room and teach me new “tricks” she had learned for teaching colors, numbers, and sight words to kindergarten students. She made learning a game for me and in turn, I was able to share the joy using our school’s technology equipment. However, with an ever increasing student population born literally with a technology device in their hands, this appeared to be more of a “sneaky passage into learning” for the students rather than a tough day digging into books. The information was presented in a format conducive to their 21st Century learning style.

The author claims that generation Z (people born from 1995-2010) is shaped by technology, and in turn, we have become a lazy generation. The author argues that, “Without an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words” (881). ‘Them’ refers to Americans. The author is claiming that America is becoming a nation full of electronic devices and new technology. As a result, we Americans expect videos on YouTube or simple illustrations to help us understand a concept we can read in text. People do not like reading mounds and mounds of text. The author claims, “As the public grows more desperate, scholars are working

As a digital immigrant, it takes a lot of effort form me to keep abreast of the latest advances in technology. Digital Native students utilize technology often in order to socialize with friends and complete projects. Teachers need to thoughtfully determine what technology applications are most effective and enhance instruction (Hammonds, Matherson, Wilson and Wright, 2013). By staying focused on student engagement and learning, teachers should find websites, application and programs that align with these goals.

In today’s day and age, it is common knowledge that students possess different learning styles than those of generations before them. In the essays by Marc Prensky “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” (2001) and “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part II: Do They Really Think Differently?” (2001) the author clearly argues a need to adapt to students modern learning styles. In Lotta Larson’s “The Learning Potential of e-Books” (2015) Larson also argues the clear benefits of eLearning for today’s students. Finally, is Naomi S. Baron’s “How E-Reading Threatens Learning is the Humanities” (2014) a different approach is noted as eLearning could be argued as distracting to a student’s learning process. It is no question that pupils today can

As schools promote 21st-century learning, there has been a push for literacies which encourage students to be 21st-century learners. The two overarching literacies, new and digital, has taken over the three R’s literacy, reading, writing, and arithmetic. New Literacies continuously change due to the new technology emerging providing different ways to get information and communicate with others (Leu et al., 2015). In contrast, digital literacy is the ability to use digital tools to access information for understanding and communication (Jose, 2016). New literacies and digital literacies also differ in aspects of use in the classroom. New literacies are the building blocks for digital literacy; which are the skills students need to understand the internet (Maloy, Verock-O'Loughlin, Edwards, & Woolf, 2017). New literacies can be taught without the use of technology because students are learning to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information. Teachers can demonstrate these skills using encyclopedias and journal articles to gain a minimalistic comprehension. Once students learn the necessary understanding, teachers can transfer these skills to online which will promote digital literacy; furthermore, digital literacy can only be taught using digital tools. Teachers would teach students how to use computers and the social practices of the new literacies to gain an understanding of the digital literacy (Jose, 2016). Furthermore, digital literacies

The aim of Marc Prensky is to get students engaged and eager about technology. It is the job of policy makers to incorporate technology in the learning and teaching f students. In this present time information is at your finger tips with the use of gadgets such as tablets etc., so students need to be aware of their technological environment. Ownership levels of technologies such as computers and mobile phones were increasing, as was students’ participation in online activities such as writing blogs, using social networking sites or instant messaging with their friends (Oliver & Goerke, 2007). The integration of technology should be the main focus of policy makers, they should ensure that the relevant equipments are

With the improved living conditions, healthcare, communication, and evolution of human intelligence, technological advancement in the world today has grown to unprecedented levels. For example, as a result of technology, patients can remotely interact with medics located in different parts of the world through telehealth/telemedicine. In the field of education, students do not necessarily need to visit libraries to access books; there are several soft copies of books online that they can access from the comfort of their desktop computers, laptops or even mobile phones. On a more advanced level, learning does not necessarily have to occur only through the reading of books and other traditionally accepted academic sources. The internet is awash with educative information which is even more up to date. In her article “Project Classroom Makeover,” Davidson discusses the potential shift in paradigm presented by technological advancement in the field of education. She argues that with technological advancement, it is no longer necessary to have students sit in class and wait to be guided, instructed, and examined by expertise. On the other side, Sherry Turkle discusses the human-machine interaction in her work “Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other” as an aspect of the changing paradigm. Nafisi’s article “Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books then presents a society deficient of modern technology. The